The Beekeeper review: Jason Statham Sky original action flick takes on tech bros in John Wick rip-off romp

Jason Statham action film The Beekeeper is a fun, violent flick that you might have seen before. Statham is one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars - despite appearing in a string of mindless action flicks of little redeeming value (The Megs 2, Expendables 4, Fast 112) his starring filmography has made $6 billion at the box office.

He is now the typecast hardman actor, a modern-day Arnie, or Sly Stallone, and very occasionally he’ll turn out an action flick that is slightly more than surface-deep.

The Beekeeper really is a pleasant surprise - the film follows Adam Clay (Statham) a literal beekeeper with a dark past who returns to his violent ways when his only friend is defrauded of her life savings by a nasty scammer group and takes her own life.

We learn that Statham used to be a Beekeeper with a capital B, an underground group of elite mercenaries that make Navy SEALs look like ‘pussies’, in the words of Jeremy Irons’ former CIA director Wallace Westwyld.

Clay pulls apart his secret armoury and heads out to destroy the company that killed her friend, and brutally kill several of the deeply irritating tech bros behind the scam. He soon finds that what he finds is just the tip of the iceberg and that he has involved himself in a conspiracy that goes right to the heart of the US government.

As Statham leaves a trail of burned-out offices and mutilated bodies behind him, Agent Verona Parker, daughter of the woman who took her own life, acts as the film’s moral compass, agonising over how far we can go in our search for justice without losing our humanity.

Action film aficionados will instantly recognise the parallels between Clay’s Beekeeper and John Wick’s Boogeyman - the films are cut from the same cloth, in fact, replace Statham’s friend with Keanu Reeves’ dog and Josh Hutcherson’s Gen Z tech douchebag with Alfie Allen’s Russian gangster, and they’re practically the same film.

But then imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and whilst The Beekeeper may not rise to quite the same level as the John Wick franchise, it makes for a solid action romp with some surprisingly committed performances from big-name stars.

Hutcherson may rest on his laurels a little, expecting his 2D character, awful dress sense, and indoor skateboarding routine to be enough to get the message across - we’re not supposed to like him - but Jeremy Irons is great as the powerful man, once in charge of the greatest elite team of killers in the world, now so clearly terrified at the threat of the Beekeeper.

Umbrella Academy star Emmy Raver-Lampman also carries the subplot of the agents on Clay’s tail whilst Bobby Naderi has the comic relief in hand as the out of his depth Agent Matt Wiley.

The Beekeeper is a little cookie cutter, there’s nothing in the way of a proper surprise, and every action fan knows exactly how this film is going to end a half hour in, but stick along for the adrenaline-fuelled ride anyway, because it’s quite fun.